Daylight Come

It is 2084. Climate change has made life on the Caribbean island of Bajacu a gruelling ordeal. The sun is so hot that people must sleep in the day and live and work at night, all the time under brutal Domin rule. Food is scarce, and people over forty are expendable. Sorrel can take no more and persuades her mother, Bibi, that they should flee the city and head for cooler ground high in the interior. She has heard there are groups known as Tribals who have found ways of evading feral animals and surviving up there. Diana McCaulay takes the reader on a tense, threat-filled odyssey as mother and daughter attempt their escape. On the way, Sorrel learns much about the nature of self-sacrifice, maternal love and the dreadful choices that must be made in the cause of self-protection. 'Like the best science fiction, Daylight Come isn't just fiction but a warning of a very possible future.' Kei Miller 'Sadly, nothing in this powerful glimpse of a possible future strains credulity; we could be building precisely this planet. Its readers, I hope, will be moved to take action right now, while we still have time to avert some of the damage. And I hope they will be moved, too, by the gritty evocation of unity across difference that allows effective resistance.' Bill McKibben 'This driving narrative explores important issues of climate change from a non-European perspective. An important book.' Ingrid Persaud

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican writer and environmental activist. She has written four previous novels, including Gone to Drift (HarperCollins), Dog-Heart and Huracan, published by Peepal Tree Press. Her short fiction has been widely published and her story, 'The Dolphin Catcher,' won a Commonwealth Short Story Regional Prize.